Today’s strip was not available for preview, so we’re diving into the archives. What was going on in the Batiukverse on May 1, say, 40 years ago? I’ll bet it was some relatable high school stuff: dopey students, stuffy teachers, Billy Carter, M*A*S*H, Galaxian, disco, the second oil crisis… something, anything far removed from this ridiculous multi-week Free Comic Book Day arc.

Or not…

Yes, the computer later known as “Holtron” temporarily replaced Les as Westview High School’s hall monitor, (retroactively cardboard) machine gun and all, because Les was so bad at the job. It mused about keeping Klingons from sneaking off to the restroom to smoke (Holtron was into Star Trek and, apparently, Brownsville Station) and threatened a hall pass-less Funky with the desk-mounted machine gun. What a time to be alive.

For the record:
Panel 1:
being a hall monitor is a very important responsibility!
Panel 2:
i have to be sure that everyone has a hall pass!
Panel 3:
we don’t want any klingons slipping into the building!

If Panel 2 isn’t Mason trying to bang a presumably underage girl, I don’t know what it is. Leering like that while rambling on about how meaningful the interaction between the two of them is will probably give me nightmares.

… I had been interested in finding just when the Cardboard Gun Retcon was made, but then I ran across a September 1999 patch of Jedi Jokes and I decided maybe I wasn’t the person to bring this information to the world.

The artwork is so much better (aside from the bricks, which I guess shows where Batiuk thought he needed to go, art-wise). But the sentence structure, oy. “Actually, Funky, neither” should have been caught right away.

…though at least that guy paid for the book that Les is signing. This beef is no doubt inspired by Batiuk having browsed eBay and coming across all the item’s he’s signed that are listed (and attracting zero bids).

Once again Batiuk can’t hide his disdain for his fellow comic book fans. The way he sees it they’re (especially the younger ones) nothing but speculators, looking to flip their treasured childhood memories for easy, easy cash. No one genuinely enjoys the hobby…except for him, of course.

Then there’s is obvious disdain for his own readers, as evidenced by how he re-runs the same dumb gags over and over. He clearly threw in the towel years ago, apparently after realizing that no one cares anyway.

Other than Crazy Harry (and that Jff guy from Crankshaft) no one in Westview even seems to enjoy comic books, they’re all a bunch of cynical profiteering assholes who can’t wait to cash in and defile the hobby with their greed. Like everything else in FW, there’s no happiness, joy or light in it at all.